Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession anchored just east of Singapore

By Simon Parry


link: andate a vedere le foto, che sono impressionanti


The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination - and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year


The tropical waters that lap the jungle shores of southern Malaysia could not be described as a paradisical shimmering turquoise. They are more of a dark, soupy green. They also carry a suspicious smell. Not that this is of any concern to the lone Indian face that has just peeped anxiously down at me from the rusting deck of a towering container ship; he is more disturbed by the fact that I may be a pirate, which, right now, on top of everything else, is the last thing he needs.
His appearance, in a peaked cap and uniform, seems rather odd; an officer without a crew. But there is something slightly odder about the vast distance between my jolly boat and his lofty position, which I can't immediately put my finger on.

Then I have it - his 750ft-long merchant vessel is standing absurdly high in the water. The low waves don't even bother the lowest mark on its Plimsoll line. It's the same with all the ships parked here, and there are a lot of them. Close to 500. An armada of freighters with no cargo, no crew, and without a destination between them.
Simon Parry among the ships in southern Malaysia
My ramshackle wooden fishing boat has floated perilously close to this giant sheet of steel. But the face is clearly more scared of me than I am of him. He shoos me away and scurries back into the vastness of his ship. His footsteps leave an echo behind them.
Navigating a precarious course around the hull of this Panama-registered hulk, I reach its bow and notice something else extraordinary. It is tied side by side to a container ship of almost the same size. The mighty sister ship sits empty, high in the water again, with apparently only the sailor and a few lengths of rope for company.
Nearby, as we meander in searing midday heat and dripping humidity between the hulls of the silent armada, a young European officer peers at us from the bridge of an oil tanker owned by the world's biggest container shipping line, Maersk. We circle and ask to go on board, but are waved away by two Indian crewmen who appear to be the only other people on the ship.

'They are telling us to go away,' the boat driver explains. 'No one is supposed to be here. They are very frightened of pirates.'
Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But their water has been stolen.
They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour.

'We don't understand why they are here. There are so many ships but no one seems to be on board,' said local fisherman Ah Wat
It is so far off the beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.
So they have been quietly retired to this equatorial backwater, to be maintained only by a handful of bored sailors. The skeleton crews are left alone to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and seaweed at what should be their busiest time of year.
Local fisherman Ah Wat, 42, who for more than 20 years has made a living fishing for prawns from his home in Sungai Rengit, says: 'Before, there was nothing out there - just sea. Then the big ships just suddenly came one day, and every day there are more of them.

'Some of them stay for a few weeks and then go away. But most of them just stay. You used to look Christmas from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few passing boats. Now you can no longer see the horizon.'
The size of the idle fleet becomes more palpable when the ships' lights are switched on after sunset. From the small fishing villages that dot the coastline, a seemingly endless blaze of light stretches from one end of the horizon to another. Standing in the darkness among the palm trees and bamboo huts, as calls to prayer ring out from mosques further inland, is a surreal and strangely disorientating experience. It makes you feel as if you are adrift on a dark sea, staring at a city of light.
Ah Wat says: 'We don't understand why they are here. There are so many ships but no one seems to be on board. When we sail past them in our fishing boats we never see anyone. They are like real ghost ships and some people are scared of them. They believe they may bring a curse with them and that there may be bad spirits on the ships.'

Two container ships tied together in southern Malaysia, waiting for the next charter
As daylight creeps across the waters, flags of convenience from destinations such as Panama and the Bahamas become visible. In reality, though, these vessels belong to some of the world's biggest Western shipping companies. And the sickness that has ravaged them began far away - in London, where the industry's heart beats, and where the plummeting profits and hugely reduced cargo prices are most keenly felt.
The Aframax-class oil tanker is the camel of the world's high seas. By definition, it is smaller than 132,000 tons deadweight and with a breadth above 106ft. It is used in the basins of the Black Sea, the North Sea, the Caribbean Sea, the China Sea and the Mediterranean - or anywhere where non-OPEC exporting countries have harbours and canals too small to accommodate very large crude carriers (VLCC) or ultra-large crude carriers (ULCCs). The term is based on the Average Freight Rate Assessment (AFRA) tanker rate system and is an industry standard.

A couple of years ago these ships would be steaming back and forth. Now 12 per cent are doing nothing
You may wish to know this because, if ever you had an irrational desire to charter one, now would be the time. This time last year, an Aframax tanker capable of carrying 80,000 tons of cargo would cost £31,000 a day ($50,000). Now it is about £3,400 ($5,500).
This is why the chilliest financial winds anywhere in the City of London are to be found blowing through its 400-plus shipping brokers.
Between them, they manage about half of the world's chartering business. The bonuses are long gone. The last to feel the tail of the economic whiplash, they - and their insurers and lawyers - await a wave of redundancies and business failures in the next six months. Commerce is contracting, fleets rust away - yet new ship-builds ordered years ago are still coming on stream.


Just 12 months ago these financiers and brokers were enjoying fat bonuses as they traded cargo space. But nobody wants the space any more, and those that still need to ship goods across the world are demanding vast reductions in price.
Do not tell these men and women about green shoots of recovery. As Briton Tim Huxley, one of Asia's leading ship brokers, says, if the world is really pulling itself out of recession, then all these idle ships should be back on the move.

'This is the time of year when everyone is doing all the Christmas stuff,' he points out.

'A couple of years ago those ships would have been steaming back and forth, going at full speed. But now you've got something like 12 per cent of the world's container ships doing nothing.'
Aframaxes are oil bearers. But the slump is industry-wide. The cost of sending a 40ft steel container of merchandise from China to the UK has fallen from £850 plus fuel charges last year to £180 this year. The cost of chartering an entire bulk freighter suitable for carrying raw materials has plunged even further, from close to £185,000 ($300,000) last summer to an incredible £6,100 ($10,000) earlier this year.
Business for bulk carriers has picked up slightly in recent months, largely because of China's rediscovered appetite for raw materials such as iron ore, says Huxley. But this is a small part of international trade, and the prospects for the container ships remain bleak.
Some experts believe the ratio of container ships sitting idle could rise to 25 per cent within two years in an extraordinary downturn that shipping giant Maersk has called a 'crisis of historic dimensions'. Last month the company reported its first half-year loss in its 105-year history.
Martin Stopford, managing director of Clarksons, London's biggest ship broker, says container shipping has been hit particularly hard: 'In 2006 and 2007 trade was growing at 11 per cent. In 2008 it slowed down by 4.7 per cent. This year we think it might go down by as much as eight per cent. If it costs £7,000 a day to put the ship to sea and if you only get £6,000 a day, than you have got a decision to make.

'Yet at the same time, the supply of container ships is growing. This year, supply could be up by around 12 per cent and demand is down by eight per cent. Twenty per cent spare is a lot of spare of anything - and it's come out of nowhere.'
These empty ships should be carrying Christmas over to the West. All retailers will have already ordered their stock for the festive season long ago. With more than 92 per cent of all goods coming into the UK by sea, much of it should be on its way here if it is going to make it to the shelves before Christmas.

Lights from the fleet of ships illuminate the night-time horizon
But retailers are running on very low stock levels, not only because they expect consumer spending to be down, but also because they simply do not have the same levels of credit that they had in the past and so are unable to keep big stockpiles.
Stopford explains: 'Globalisation and shipping go hand in hand. Worldwide, we ship about 8.2 billion tons of cargo a year. That's more than one ton per person and probably two to three tons for richer people like us in the West. If the total goes down by five per cent or so, that's a lot of cargo that isn't moving.'
The knock-on effect of so many ships sitting idle rather than moving consumer goods between Asia and Europe could become apparent in Britain in the months ahead.

'We will find out at Christmas whether there are enough PlayStations in the shops or not. There will certainly be fewer goods coming in to Britain during the run-up to Christmas.'
Three thousand miles north-east of the ghost fleet of Johor, the shipbuilding capital of the world rocks to an unpunctuated chorus of hammer-guns blasting rivets the size of dustbin lids into shining steel panels that are then lowered onto the decks of massive new vessels.
As the shipping industry teeters on the brink of collapse, the activity at boatyards like Mokpo and Ulsan in South Korea all looks like a sick joke. But the workers in these bustling shipyards, who teem around giant tankers and mega-vessels the length of several football pitches and capable of carrying 10,000 or more containers each, have no choice; they are trapped in a cruel time warp.

There have hardly been any new orders. In 2011 the shipyards will simply run out of ships to build
A decade ago, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung (who died last month) issued a decree to his industrial captains: he wished to make his nation the market leader in shipbuilding. He knew the market intimately. Before entering politics, he studied economics and worked for a Japanese-owned freight-shipping business. Within a few years he was heading his own business, starting out with a fleet of nine ships.
Thus, by 2004, Kim Dae-jung's presidential vision was made real. His country's low-cost yards were winning 40 per cent of world orders, with Japan second with 24 per cent and China way behind on 14 per cent.
But shipbuilding is a horrendously hard market to plan. There is a three-year lag between the placing of an order and the delivery of a ship. With contracts signed, down-payments made and work under way, stopping work on a new ship is the economic equivalent of trying to change direction in an ocean liner travelling at full speed towards an iceberg.
Thus the labours of today's Korean shipbuilders merely represent the completion of contracts ordered in the fat years of 2006 and 2007. Those ships will now sail out into a global economy that no longer wants them.
Maersk announced last week that it was renegotiating terms and prices with Asian shipyards for 39 ordered tankers and gas carriers. One of the company's executives, Kristian Morch, said the shipping industry was in uncharted waters.

link

Posted on 17 September 2009

By Patrick Wood, Editor

Has the world gone mad? Can everyone really see clearly now?

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obsta­cles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright, bright Sun-Shiny day.

Money and credit is con­tracting at Great Depres­sion rates while the stocks and metals rise to new highs.

Bernanke says the reces­sion is over while the former chief econ­o­mist for the Bank for Inter­na­tional Set­tle­ments says we are headed toward another finan­cial and eco­nomic crisis.

William White was the top BIS econ­o­mist from 1995 through 2008. He cor­rectly pre­dicted the orig­inal banking crisis and even bat­tled with Alan Greenspan over his easy credit policy as early as 2003.

At the Sep­tember 14 Sibos con­fer­ence in Hong Kong, White just called for a “double-dip” reces­sion where the second dip could be sig­nif­i­cantly worse than the first. At best, he says we will have an “L” shaped reces­sion where we stag­nate like Japan did since the 1990’s.

At the same time, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported that “US credit shrinks at Great Depres­sion rate prompting fears of double-dip reces­sion”:

“Both bank credit and the M3 money supply in the United States have been con­tracting at rates com­pa­rable to the onset of the Great Depres­sion since early summer, raising fears of a double-dip reces­sion in 2010 and a slide into debt-deflation.”

He gleaned this infor­ma­tion from a report issued by Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Research (Tim Con­gdon) which serves the global elite with a sub­scrip­tion rate of $5000 per year.

According to Con­gdon, “There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s. The rapid destruc­tion of money bal­ances is madness.”

Another elite econ­o­mist, David Rosen­berg, is also watching the con­trac­tion of money and credit:

“For the first time in the post-WW2 era, we have defla­tion in credit, wages and rents and, from our lens, this is a toxic brew.”

The actual stats look like this… in June, July and August, U.S. bank loans shrank at an annual rate of almost 14 per­cent. Four­teen per­cent! M1, M2 and M3 are falling at annual rates of 6.5 per­cent, 12.2 per­cent and 5 per­cent, respectively.

These num­bers are worse than those prior to the market col­lapse of 2007  –  2009.

I recently talked to a senior loan officer at a fairly con­ser­v­a­tive regional bank. When I asked about these fig­ures and the bank’s own expe­ri­ence, her coun­te­nance dropped. She con­fided that new loans (of any kind for any reason) are vir­tu­ally non-existent, and that there was no signs of relief on the horizon. Nobody can qualify for busi­ness loans because there are no profits. Home loans are skit­tish at best, and they are usu­ally requiring a down pay­ment of 20 per­cent, plus a job and other vis­ible assets.

While the white rab­bits run off with Alice in Won­der­land, the reality is that we are on the verge of an across-the-board eco­nomic and market meltdown.

Defla­tion has secured its grip on the world economy, and is accel­er­ating down­ward at a record pace.

Since 2007, the pic­ture has been like an avalanche that started at the top of a large moun­tain. The destruc­tive power of the first 1/3 of the avalanche is rel­a­tively mild com­pared to the last 2/3. The snow­balls just get bigger and harder as they roll down the hill.

There is no human taming of an avalanche, either. It stops with a thump when it reaches the bottom, having taken every­thing in its path with it.

So, why isn’t Bernanke warning Amer­i­cans? All of the above infor­ma­tion is from Europe, not the U.S. They appar­ently know more about us than our press will admit.

Bernanke is an expert on the Great Depres­sion and defla­tion. He has spoken many times on both topics. Yet, in the face of clear mon­e­tary evi­dence, Bernanke chooses to tell a story that is exactly oppo­site of reality.

Bernanke, addressing the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion on Sep­tember 15th, said “The reces­sion is over.”

Either Bernanke is in gross denial or else he is involved in a larger, more pur­poseful decep­tion designed to catch Amer­i­cans com­pletely off guard.

For instance, while Amer­i­cans are buying stocks again at a record rate, insiders are dumping their stocks at a rate of 30:1. The insiders obvi­ously under­stand some­thing that the public is not aware of.

Although I under­stand and accept that opin­ions vary widely within the global elite on any number of issues, I cannot hardly accept that Bernanke doesn’t know better about defla­tion, declining money and credit and depression.

Whether inten­tional or not, Amer­i­cans are being set up for another painful thrashing.

US May Face 'Armageddon' If China, Japan Don't Buy Debt

The US is too dependent on Japan and China buying up the country's debt and could face severe economic problems if that stops, Tiger Management founder and chairman Julian Robertson told CNBC.

"It's almost Armageddon if the Japanese and Chinese don't buy our debt,” Robertson said in an interview. "I don't know where we could get the money. I think we've let ourselves get in a terrible situation and I think we ought to try and get out of it."

Robertson said inflation is a big risk if foreign countries were to stop buying bonds.

“If the Chinese and Japanese stop buying our bonds, we could easily see [inflation] go to 15 to 20 percent,” he said. “It's not a question of the economy. It's a question of who will lend us the money if they don't. Imagine us getting ourselves in a situation where we're totally dependent on those two countries. It's crazy.”

Robertson said while he doesn’t think the Chinese will stop buying US bonds, the Japanese may eventually be forced to sell some of their long-term bonds.

“That's much worse than not buying,” he said. “The other thing is, they're buying almost exclusively short-term debt. And that's what we are offering, because we can't sell the long-term debt. And you know, the history has been that people who borrow short term really get burned.”
The only way to avoid the problem, he said, is to "grow and save our way out of it."

"The U.S. has to quit spending, cut back, start saving, and scale backward," Robertson said. "Until that happens, I don't think we're anywhere near out of the woods.”

Robertson is not very optimistic about the short-term.

“We're in for some real rough sledding,” he said. “ I really do think the recession is at least temporarily over. But we haven't addressed so many of our problems and we are borrowing so much money that we can't possibly pay it back, unless the Chinese and Japanese buy our bonds.”

Source > CNBC

Sta per arrivare la morte del dollaro

di Robert Fisk - 6 ottobre 2009

Mettendo in atto la piu’ radicale trasformazione finanziaria della recente storia del Medio Oriente gli Stati arabi stanno pensando – insieme a Cina, Russia, Giappone e Francia – di abbandonare il dollaro come valuta per il pagamento del petrolio adottando al suo posto un paniere di valute tra cui lo yen giapponese, lo yuan cinese, l’euro, l’oro e una nuova moneta unica prevista per i Paesi aderenti al Consiglio per la cooperazione del Golfo, tra cui Arabia Saudita, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait e Qatar.

Incontri segreti hanno gia’ avuto luogo tra i ministri delle finanze e i governatori delle banche centrali della Russia, della Cina, del Giappone e del Brasile per mettere a punto il progetto che avra’ come conseguenza il fatto che il prezzo del greggio non sara’ piu’ espresso in dollari.

Il progetto, confermato al nostro giornale da fonti bancarie arabe dei Paesi del Golfo Persico e cinesi di Hong Kong, potrebbe contribuire a spiegare l’improvviso rincaro del prezzo dell’oro, ma preannuncia anche nei prossimi nove anni un esodo senza precedenti dai mercati del dollaro.

Gli americani, che sono al corrente degli incontri – pur non conoscendone i dettagli – sono certi di poter sventare questo intrigo internazionale di cui fanno parte leali alleati come il Giappone e i Paesi del Golfo. Sullo sfondo di questi incontri valutari, Sun Bigan, ex inviato speciale della Cina in Medio Oriente, ha sottolineato il rischio di approfondire le divisioni tra Cina e Stati Uniti in ordine alla loro influenza politica e petrolifera in Medio Oriente. “Le dispute e gli scontri bilaterali sono inevitabili”, ha detto all’Africa and Asia Review. “Non possiamo abbassare la guardia in merito all’ostilita’ che fronteggiamo in Medio Oriente sugli interessi energetici e la sicurezza”.

Questa frase ha tutta l’aria di una previsione pericolosa su una futura guerra economica tra Stati Uniti e Cina per il petrolio mediorientale – con il pericolo di trasformare i conflitti della regione in una lotta di supremazia delle grandi potenze. L’incremento della domanda di petrolio e’ piu’ marcato in Cina che negli Stati Uniti in quanto la crescita cinese e’ meno efficiente sotto il profilo energetico. Abbandonando il dollaro i pagamenti, stando a fonti bancarie cinesi, potrebbero essere effettuati in via transitoria in oro. Una indicazione della gigantesca quantita’ di denaro di cui si parla puo’ essere desunta dalla ricchezza di Abu Dhabi, Arabia Saudita, Kuwait e Qatar che insieme hanno, stando alle stime, riserve in dollari per 2.100 miliardi.

Il declino della potenza economica americana strettamente connesso all’attuale recessione globale e’ stato riconosciuto dal presidente della Banca Mondiale Robert Zoellick. “Una delle conseguenze di questa crisi potrebbe essere l’accettazione del fatto che sono cambiati i rapporti di forza economici”, ha detto a Istanbul prima delle riunioni di questa settimana del Fondo Monetario Internazionale e della Banca Mondiale. Ma e’ stato il nuovo straordinario potere finanziario della Cina – non disgiunto dalla rabbia sia dei Paesi produttori che dei Paesi consumatori di petrolio nei confronti del potere di interferenza degli Stati Uniti nel sistema finanziario internazionale – a stimolare i recenti colloqui con i Paesi del Golfo.

Brasile e India si sono mostrati interessati a far parte di un sistema di pagamenti non piu’ basato sul dollaro. Allo stato la Cina appare la piu’ entusiasta tra le potenze finanziarie, non fosse altro che per il suo gigantesco interscambio commerciale con il Medio Oriente.

La Cina importa il 60% del petrolio che consuma, per lo piu’ dal Medio Oriente e dalla Russia. I cinesi hanno concessioni petrolifere in Iraq – bloccate fino a quest’anno dagli Stati Uniti – e dal 2008 hanno un accordo da 8 miliardi di dollari con l’Iran per lo sviluppo delle capacita’ di raffinazione e delle risorse di gas. La Cina ha contratti petroliferi in Sudan (dove ha sostituito gli Stati Uniti) e da tempo sta negoziando concessioni petrolifere in Libia dove tradizionalmente questo genere di accordi e’ del tipo joint venture.

Inoltre le esportazioni cinesi verso la regione ammontano ora a non meno del 10% delle importazioni di tutti i Paesi del Medio Oriente e includono una vasta gamma di prodotti che vanno dalle automobili agli armamenti, ai generi alimentari, al vestiario e persino alle bambole. Riconoscendo esplicitamente il crescente peso finanziario della Cina, il presidente della Banca Centrale Europea, Jean-Claude Trichet, ha chiesto l’altro ieri a Pechino di consentire alla yuan di apprezzarsi sul dollaro e, di conseguenza, di diminuire la dipendenza della Cina dalla politica monetaria americana contribuendo cosi’ a riequilibrare l’economia mondiale e ad alleggerire la pressione al rialzo sull’euro.

Dagli accordi di Bretton Woods – gli accordi conclusi dopo la seconda guerra mondiale che ci hanno tramandato l’architettura del moderno sistema finanziario internazionale – i partner commerciali degli Stati Uniti hanno dovuto affrontare le conseguenze della posizione di controllo di Washington e, negli anni piu’ recenti, dell’egemonia del dollaro in quanto principale valuta di riserva.

I cinesi credono, ad esempio, che siano stati gli americani a convincere la Gran Bretagna a non entrare nell’euro per impedire una fuga dal dollaro. Ma secondo le fonti bancarie cinesi i colloqui sono andati troppo avanti per poter essere bloccati. “Non e’ da escludere che nel paniere delle monete entri anche il rublo”, ha detto un importante broker di Hong Kong all’Indipendent. “La Gran Bretagna e’ presa in mezzo e finira’ per entrare nell’euro. Non ha scelta in quanto non potra’ piu’ usare il dollaro americano”.

Le fonti finanziarie cinesi sono convinte che il presidente Barack Obama sia troppo occupato a rimettere in piedi l’economia americana per concentrarsi sulle straordinarie implicazioni della transizione dal dollaro ad altre valute nel volgere di nove anni. Al momento la data fissata per l’abbandono del dollaro e’ il 2018.

Gli Stati Uniti hanno fatto appena cenno a questo problema in occasione del G20 di Pittsburgh. Il governatore della Banca centrale cinese e altri funzionari da anni sono preoccupati per la situazione del dollaro e non ne fanno mistero. Il loro problema e’ che gran parte della ricchezza nazionale e’ in dollari.

“Questi progetti cambieranno il volto delle transazioni finanziarie internazionali”, ha detto un banchiere cinese. “Stati Uniti e Gran Bretagna debbono essere molto preoccupati. Vi accorgerete di quanto sono preoccupati dalla pioggia di smentite che questa notizia scatenera’”.

Alla fine del mese scorso l’Iran ha annunciato che le sue riserve in valuta estera saranno in futuro in euro e non in dollari. I banchieri ricordano, naturalmente, quanto e’ capitato all’ultimo Paese produttore di petrolio del Medio Oriente che ha tentato di vendere il petrolio in euro e non in dollari. Pochi mesi dopo che Saddam Hussein aveva comunicato la sua decisione ai quattro venti, gli americani e gli inglesi hanno invaso l’Iraq.

Versione originale:
Fonte: independent.co.uk

Traduzione a cura di Carlo Antonio Biscotto

Fonte: Antimafia 2000

Sviluppi crisi economica 2009 - Dissesto GeoPolitico Globale

Non lo copio perche' e' decisamente lungo e pieno di link.. ma vale la pena leggerlo.

Paranoie? Non credo.